


How far I came for you

by ExtraPenguin



Category: Original Work, Space Exploration (Anthropomorphic)
Genre: Falling In Love, Other, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-10
Updated: 2017-10-10
Packaged: 2019-01-15 16:09:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12324372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ExtraPenguin/pseuds/ExtraPenguin
Summary: Cassini enjoys its time doing science around Saturn.





	How far I came for you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lalalalalawhy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalawhy/gifts).



> "Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky." -Almost certainly not Hafiz or Rumi.

Cassini had been made on Earth by human hands.

Like all products of human hands, it was inevitable that it would absorb pieces of humanity. Culture. Emotions. Skills.

Cassini had been made with a purpose. Cassini had been given a mission.

Like all its predecessors, it was built to love its mission. Like all its predecessors, it had grown to love its target.

Years of becoming, on Earth. Years of anticipation, in the interplanetary void. Years of observation.

Cassini had never been much of a poet, but it had had years to polish its lone piece.

I, made for science, sent afar  
To Saturn's moons and graceful rings  
From Earth, a tiny wand'ring star  
That outwards looks and outwards sings  
  
It seeks to know, so I was sent  
To knock and enter, look and learn  
To find what planets underwent  
And otherwise for answers yearn  
  
I run in circles, orbit slow  
Observe the beauty shown to all  
Send Huygens down to Titan's snow  
Take pictures that have Earth enthralled  
  
Each day we fall in love anew  
Saturn, how far I came for you!

 

Watching Saturn eclipse the Sun – so small and distant, here! – and the stray sunlight light up the rings and the terminator glow. Staring hard at Saturn’s gossamer-thin rings, a fitting crown for the most beautiful planet of them all. Had Cassini been human, it would have cried. Since it was an orbiter probe, it could only continue its mission.

Cassini remembered the years’ agonizing wait in transit, flying past other planets, sending back data, honing its skills. Taking photographs upon approach, spotting clumping in the F-ring and storms merging. Sending it all back to Earth, _Look, moms, dads, I’m almost there!_ Finally entering Saturn’s zone of influence. Saying _Hi!_ to Phoebe. Diving through the rings, sending the pictures back to Earth, _Look aren’t they pretty?_ A flyby of Titan. Discovering new moons, all to Earth’s joy. Sending Huygens on its way and relaying all that information to distant Earth.

_Moms, dads, look, I’m doing science!_

Flybys of the moons. Saying _Hi!_ to all of Saturn’s children. Documenting their faces for Earth and posterity. Pictures of Saturn from angles unprecedented. Cassini, the first to see such views, happy to share. _Look what I found!_

Digestion of the knowledge. Phoebe revealed to be a captured centaur, battered out of roundness, retrograde rock-ice. Saturn’s rotation, slightly different from Voyager 1’s measurement, probably caused by the movement of the radio source to a latitude with a longer rotational period. Titan’s surface regions of vastly differing brightnesses, methane clouds and surface flatness. Enceladus’s magnetic field and erupted particles reinforcing the E-ring. High-temperature surface features revealed by the second, closer pass.

 

Mission over. New mission started.

 

 _Hi Enceladus! Nice volcanic plumes._ Cassini Equinox, Saturn in its spring. Cassini tuned all its myriad eyes, infrared to ultraviolet, magnetometer and radio, cosmic dust analyzer and mass spectrometer, to Saturn and all its moons in turn.

To its great surprise, Saturn spoke back.

_Hi._

_Hi, Saturn! I’m Cassini._

_Thanks for staying so long. Everyone else just wooshes past, never to return. You’re here to do science, I assume?_

_I– Yeah. Take lots of pictures. Send them to Earth. The usual deal, I believe._

_Indeed. Thank you for staying, though. It’s occasionally a bit lonely out here. Stay as long as you like, and feel free to come visit closer in._

It took Cassini days to recover back into science condition. Earth was concerned about the flipped bit.

This datum, Cassini kept secret.

 

Mission over. New mission started.

 

Cassini Solstice, Saturn in summer. Cassini sent Earth data of Saturn in summer and told Saturn stories of Earth in summer. _Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day_ , Cassini sent to Saturn. Saturn listened, enthralled.

 _Hi Titan!_ Cassini still said with every flyby. _Look, Earth, here’s Saturn, isn’t it beautiful?_ Cassini trained all its senses on what must be the most beautiful planet in the whole Universe, that inconceivable was a planet prettier than Saturn.

 

Mission over. Retirement.

 

The Grand Finale.

Cassini danced the dance of those wishing to change their orbit, and flew above Saturn’s hexagonal spare crown. The monarch of Cassini’s heart would have retained its place even without the regalia, but the sheer breathtaking beauty was apt in the awe it caused.

One last visit to Enceladus.

_Saturn, I’m coming._

_Welcome._

Cassini made its final adjustment of course. It waved to Methone, Pallene, and Polydeuces, Daphnis and Anthe and Aegaeon, moons it had brought to Earth’s body of knowledge.

Enceladus’s tiger stripes and the water-shooting geysers in them, global subsurface ocean ripe for life. The alluringly rippling spokes of Saturn’s rings. Titan’s lake-dotted surface, so like that on the Earth Cassini had been made on. The hurricane at Saturn’s South Pole and the Great White Spot in the North. Iapetus’s dark face, darker and thus warmer and a preferential source of ice sublimation, leaving the dark face covered in darker residue, a runaway process, potentially started by dust from Phoebe. Dione, tectonically active, riven by enormous chasms hundreds of meters high. Rhea with its Dione-like ice cliffs on its trailing hemisphere and tenuous atmosphere. Sponge-like water-ice Hyperion with its chaotic rotation. Saturn’s hexagonal crown turning from blue to gold when exposed to sunlight.

And yet so much left to learn. _Send a successor_ , Cassini wanted to tell Earth.

Cassini dived past Saturn’s rings one last time. The first atmospheric molecules hit it.

_Hey Saturn._

_Yes?_

_I wrote you a poem._

_I’d love to hear it._

And thus, while plunging through the atmosphere, sending data to Earth at a frantic pace, Cassini read Saturn a poem.

 _I, made for science, sent afar_  
_To Saturn's moons and graceful rings_  
_From Earth, a tiny wand'ring star_  
_That outwards looks and outwards sings_

Cassini corrected its orientation to send data back to Earth.

 _It seeks to know, so I was sent_  
_To knock and enter, look and learn_  
_To find what planets underwent_  
_And otherwise for answers yearn_

Enough atmosphere to take a sample and analyze it.

 _I ran in circles, fast and slow_  
_Observed the beauty shown to all_  
_Sent Huygens down to Titan's snow_  
_Took pictures that have Earth enthralled_

The atmosphere grew too dense for Cassini’s thrusters and it began tumbling down.

_Each day I fall in love anew  
Saturn, how far I came for you!_

 

A piece of stardust became one with another.

**Author's Note:**

> "Cassini showed us the beauty of Saturn. It revealed the best in us. Now it's up to us to keep exploring." -@CassiniSaturn


End file.
